Sicilian Transplants Help Give Middletown Its Unique Identity

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SHAWN R. BEALS, sbeals@courant.com

Thousands of Middletown residents have come from the Sicilian town of Melilli since the late 1800s, forming a close community of Italian Americans that gives the city a unique identity.

While many Connecticut towns have a distinct European heritage, it's rare to find one so thoroughly transplanted from a single location. The majority of Middletown's Italians can trace their roots back to Melilli, a village in southeastern Sicily.

A few other Sicilians and Italians arrived in the 1870s and 1880s, but the arrival of Melilli resident Angelo Magnano in 1895 set off a decades-long settling of Middletown after he convinced his brother, Vincenzo, and a friend, Luigi Annino, to join him.

Through word of mouth, Middletown became known as a haven for the Melillesi looking for a better opportunity in America after the hardships they experienced in post-industrial Europe.

"They would tell their family and friends back home how well they were doing," said Joseph Lombardo, 90, a second-generation Melillesi. "Middletown was highly industrialized. There were available jobs for people who were willing to work."

Lombardo's father arrived in Middletown in 1907, and his mother came in 1916. He said the first immigrants to Middletown from Melilli helped establish the community, and his generation seized the opportunity they were given by their parents.

Lombardo wrote his master's thesis at Wesleyan University in 1989 about the settling of Middletown by the Melilli residents.

"I'm very proud of what our people did," Lombardo said. "They had nothing. They were poor people. I learned to fly an airplane in the Army, but I couldn't drive a car because we couldn't afford one."

By the time the Melillesi arrived, the Irish had been living in Middletown for a while. The eastern side of Main Street, which had been occupied by the Irish, became in only a few years like a "Little Melilli," as the Irish moved up the hill to the western side of Main Street, according to the 2001 Melilli-produced book "Melilli: Discovering the Territory" by Paolo Magnano.

In a city with a long history of English, Swedish and German immigrants dating back to the 1600s, the Melilli transplants came to dominate Middletown's identity within 50 years.

The most obvious remnant of the cultural bond between Middletown and Melilli is the annual St. Sebastian Feast. In Middletown, St. Sebastian Church celebrated the 93rd annual feast this year, while the Melilli parent church has held the festival for more than 600 years.

In his 1980 book, "Arrivederci Melilli… Hello Middletown," James Vincenzo Annino wrote that the dominant church in the North End of Middletown was St. John's, a mostly Irish parish. The Melillesi wanted their own church, and were finally granted permission in the mid-1920s. After raising enough money holding festivals for their venerated St. Sebastian, the church was built on Washington Street in 1931. The baroque, Renaissance Revival church is modeled after the St. Sebastian in Melilli.

Official and unofficial delegations from Middletown and Melilli have exchanged trips since the post-World War II days. Mayor Anthony "Buddy" Sbona led a delegation to Sicily in the early 1970s and in 1982, about 70 Connecticut residents visited Melilli for two weeks. Mayor Domenique Thornton led the most recent official trip in 2000.

Groups from St. Sebastian Church have attended the Melilli feast several times in recent years.

In 1963, Melilli Mayor Angelo Pandolfini brought a group from Italy, and visited friends and family in Middletown during a trip to the United States. A June 1979 Courant article covering the visit of Mayor Antonino Musumeci to Middletown said the city was well known to have "more Melillians than Melilli."

The city council in 1979 named Melilli the sister city of Middletown.

It was in the post-World War II period that the Melillesi began to spread throughout the city, Lombardo said. Families began to spread from the downtown area to the southern and western portions of Middletown.

Lombardo, who now lives in Middlefield, retired as executive vice president of Raymond Industries after 30 years with the company, then worked for another 30 running the Hill Development Corp. at Wesleyan University.

"What to me was astounding was how well my generation did," Lombardo said. "You will find I'm very typical of our how group was – enthusiastic, willing to work. That obviously is going to have an effect on what the city's going to be like."